The evolution of wireless communication systems has dramatically increased beyond voice services. For example, data services have been adopted for communication with users and machines as well as for applications requiring communication between machines. Wireless communication has been increasingly adopted for data transfer, collection and/or submission, for example from and/or to wireless meters and teller machines. The rising use of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications has emphasized aspects of data traffic management that may go beyond those regarding mobility in traditional wireless communication systems that are not well supported by traditional wireless networks for human-to-human communication.
Many existing wireless communication systems are configured to provide access to a number of voice and data services from mobile devices to facilitate wireless communication. Wireless data services are supported by digital wireless communication systems including GPRS (general packet radio service) as supported by GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication), or UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone System) and will be part of the LTE (Long Term Evolution) system, for example.
Wireless communication systems are generally hierarchically organized and comprise one or more subnetworks. Each subnetwork may be configured to provide predetermined functions and/or services to predetermined areas. Subnetworks may be interconnected by a corresponding backbone network. A subnetwork generally comprises a number of interconnected packet data service nodes that can render data packet services for wireless terminals via several base stations. Practically all present civil wireless communication systems provide packet-switched data transmission between a support node and the wireless terminals associated with it. Certain subnetworks may be connected to an external data network, for example, to a public switched data or phone network, via predetermined gateway nodes for relaying corresponding services. Wireless communication systems service thus allows packet data transmission between wireless terminals and external data networks.
The increasing adoption and availability of access to wireless communication systems proves useful not only for applications of mobile wireless terminals but for convenient interconnection of wireless terminals independent of benefits provided by sustaining mobile wireless connectivity. Mobility aspects of a growing number of applications of wireless terminals, for example, for machine communication, however, may differ from those of mobile phones traditionally used for human to human communication.
Wireless communication system designers have typically addressed mobility aspects for wireless terminals without distinguishing between different applications of different wireless terminals. One aspect of mobility management is that a wireless terminal may be fully operatively associated only with a portion of a wireless communication system at a time and that therefore its location, or the portion of the system that it is associated with, needs to be tracked in order for the wireless communication system to be able to contact the wireless terminal without having to page for it in the entire network. For this purpose, wireless terminals typically initiate an update of their location periodically or when they roam into areas serviced by other portions of the wireless communication system. Such updates may occur in the form of routing and location area updates in UMTS or in the form of tracking area updates in LTE, for example. Communications for wireless terminal tracking and/or paging may cause a significant amount of network traffic without exchanging any data payload to and/or from the wireless terminals, however this network traffic can be required to maintain an operational condition of the system. Increasing use of many M2M applications may therefore result in an unnecessary increase in traffic for control overhead, which can be a burden on a wireless network.
A number of solutions have been suggested that attempt to reduce network traffic overhead caused by wireless terminal tracking and/or paging. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,477,895, 7,333,811, 6,922,561, 6,584,314, 6,363,255, 6,236,861, 6,138,025, 6,101,388, 5,960,356, 5,960,345, 5,953,667, 5,898,923, 5,642,398, 5,606,596 and 5,097,499, and United States Patent Application Publication Nos. 2008/0119209 and 2004/0176113, describe aspects of reducing network traffic caused by wireless terminal tracking and/or paging. None of these, however, is useful for applications where wireless terminals rarely move or, in comparison to their mobility, rarely need to transmit, or rarely need to be paged and/or receive data.
Therefore there is a need for a solution that overcomes at least one of the deficiencies in the art.
This background information is provided to reveal information believed by the applicant to be of possible relevance to the present invention. No admission is necessarily intended, nor should be construed, that any of the preceding information constitutes prior art against the present invention.